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Comment by technofiend | Hacker News Reader

In my humble opinion passive consumption of media is entirely different from engaging in a creative process. Perhaps it's just projection on my part but surfing the web for hours reading Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube is entirely different than banging out some new chapters for your NaNoWriMo novel, updating a blog or making a github commit.

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> In my humble opinion passive consumption of media is entirely different from engaging in a creative process. Perhaps it's just projection on my part but surfing the web for hours reading Reddit, Hacker News and YouTube is entirely different than banging out some new chapters for your NaNoWriMo novel, updating a blog or making a github commit.

I will second this so hard, as it is my experience as well. Just staring slackjawed, mindlessly scrolling for hours on end, is a noticeable difference from writing code. I wish there were studies on these differences.

The researchers attempted to control for this:

"Sedentary screen time Sedentary screen time is calculated in hours per week, adding together the participants’ answers to the questions ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend watching TV?’ (FC: 1070) and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’ (FC: 1080)."

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...

>and ‘In a typical DAY, how many hours do you spend using a computer? (not including time using a computer at work)’

Sure, that's at least an attempt. However would you characterize spending time on a personal project work? That's why I called out my specific examples of side jobs and hobby projects.

I'm not rejecting the findings In particular, maintaining optimal sleep and lessening screen time (which is often an issue in youth), while having adequate physical activity and good dietary quality, may reduce the symptoms of depression,” of lessening screen time in favor of more constructive activity like exercise. I'm suggesting there's probably room here for a deeper dive into the kind and quality of screen time, because even bucketing it into just work vs everything else is arguably too broad. I believe some kinds of screen time are constructive.

That's interesting, but have you got evidence for your belief? Are you sure the wish is not father to the thought here?

Well clearly not, any more than I have evidence to the contrary. I did my best to qualify my statements that it's just one person's opinion. Sorry if that's not obvious.

The onus is on those making the initial claim that they have properly accounted for error and that their interpretation of the evidence is the most reasonable. Questioning if a potential error has been accounted for or if another interpretation has been considered is important.

That seems like a terrible control. Plenty of people do non-constructive things on computers at work (I'm doing so right now) and lots of people are productive at home.

I don't understand how this controls for GP's concerns. You'd need something much more precise, like "how many hours per week do you spend using the computer in an active creative pursuit such as writing, drawing etc."

I actually agree. My point was just that our opinions are just that: opinions. We did not actually study it in a controlled scientific way.

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